Makings Of A Killer
by Air Vee
Summary: L offers some incite to upcoming of his greatest success... and his greatest failure: Beyond Birthday. contains spoilers for another note


1

I was pretty sure from the first day he walked through those doors to the day I sent him to jail, he was in love with me. Not me as a person, someone he wanted to be with. No. He hated me. He couldn't stand my existence. He wanted me dead. No, his love was for the adoration and attention of being L. The fame, the glory, the worship. Things I paid no attention to. He molded himself after me. Playfully at first, then a full blown addiction. It was flattering in the beginning. I was happy to take him under my wing though he was a year or two older than myself. We were great friends. Competitive and as we got older his affectionate after taking became a mockery of my existence. But beneath it we were still wondrous friends. He helped me with a few cases calling himself the "Public L". My eyes, my hands, my shield. He was the perfect heir. Perfect. But even perfection has flaws. His was his desire to be within the criminal mind. To be the criminal. That's why he left. That's why he told me he could never replace me. He could only destroy and remove me from this world. I felt an emotion like none before when he left. Heartbreak. That I could let him down so much that he could only despise me in such a way that he thought it necessary to remove L by force. That was Beyond. Childish. Arrogant. Just like his creator; just like me.

The first day I came to Wammys I locked myself in my room. B sat outside my door, waiting for me to come out. I didn't know it but Watari had told him to leave me alone. Give me time to adjust. B was hard of hearing or just hardheaded. He sat there for three days, waiting. I watched. Barely blinking, not sleeping, much the way I am today. Eventually hunger got the best of the two of us. He introduced himself as Beyond. I thought he was lying.  
"What's your real name?" I asked in the innocence of my childhood.  
He shrugged his shoulders.  
"I don't know. My mum called me Beyond. I think that's my name. She always said 'Lord, you're Beyond me!' "  
I didn't get it at the time but that didn't stop him from laughing, or deciding how to laugh, at his own joke. He explained we were to never reveal our real names to anyone, not each other, not to Roger, and not to Watari. I didn't understand. I know better now.  
I extended my hand for a shake, pure manners. "My name is"  
"L Lawliet!" He announced gripping my hand firmly and shaking it as expected from any child.  
"How... did you know my name"  
"I can, like, just see it... you know"  
I didn't. But as with the names, I have come to understand. Beyond and I talked and he'd laugh his many laughs asking me to help him decide which to use for the rest of his life. I never really, in the many years after our meetings, have fully grasped what B's mind was like. He was perfectly sane. He assured me. He was a levelheaded, calm guy with a mysterious zest for life. Considering all he saw was death it bothered me to think he could be so cheerful. It was eerie. Years later after many more children had come to Wammys, B and I had seriously approached the idea of being detectives and worked together on each other▓s cases. Many times leaving England of our own account, but returning soon after with the usual news of our success. Around my 3rd year of this detective work, B decided to take a different approach to our work. More hands on, he said. We talked and argued about it but I decided that if he wanted this he would work for me. He wanted this for himself, he screamed at me, then stormed out slamming the door behind him. He came to me the next day sitting on the floor, no longer imitating me. He was bent over, his stomach to his thighs, hands in between the two. No bright look in his dark blue eyes, they were red watery. He looked up at me as I walked through the door.  
"A killed himself." He stared at me with wide eyes similar to my own. "And I...I'm ashamed to say this Law, but I... I helped him"  
As so many times before I didn't understand what he meant. So I asked.  
"I asked him what he was doing and he asked me to kill him." He looked up to me his voice showing no emotion but his eyes saying what his lips couldn't. "I killed him L. He cut his throat and...I-I killed him"  
"If he cut his own throat that is suicide, B. You know that. You had nothing to do with it"  
"Will you shut up and let me finish"  
You would expect such a statement to be shouted but it was what I said it was; a statement. Calm collected, monotoned statement.  
"I let him die... Or I should have. " He looked away for a moment, deciding if to tell me the rest. "I know what suicide is L. I know that if they change their mind you're supposed to help them. A changed his mind. And... So did I." He stood up showing me his blood stained shirt and hands. "I was going to help him... but I changed my mind. I killed him L. I cut his throat again. And..." As if he couldn't fit another and in there, he smiled at this one. "I liked it"  
Those three little words cause Watari to send B away for counseling. He was gone for 3 months coming back like the old B, cheerful, happy. I truly wanted him to stay that way, I wanted to believe that he would. He tried. He did work for me as a "Public L" using the name Ryuzaki, he heard it when we were last in Japan. He liked it as did I, but I had no need for the name. I had recently beaten that cocky Eraldo Coil at his own game. He'd gone into hiding out of shame and I took his name as an alias. So he went by Ryuzaki calling me Eru as was the Japanese way of saying L. "Eru Roraito!" He'd laugh. His accent was wonderful for pronunciation. Anyone who met him easily mistook him for a native. But he was B, laughing everything he said in Japanese off to another day. A day where his fluency and my own were dangerously tangled.

2 B imitation of me was precise and dead on. Watari often was unable to tell us apart and B would play tricks on our caretaker making him think we were each other. Until the obvious truth was told. B's preference of Jam to my various sweets and teas exposed him many more times than Watari could handle refusing to serve either of us until we could agree on a way to separate our appearance from one another. B made the decision on his own lifting his dark gray shirt to show me how. In well written Kanji were the English translation "I am B." I wanted to laugh at its simplicity, but all I could muster was a meek smile, which was enough for B. He happily reported that he'd done it himself.  
"With what"  
"With a knife! And you're the smart one"  
I wasn't too surprised, he was skilled in many fields he used in America. Knives, ropes, fire and he bragged he had a good swing from his childhood games of Baseball. He had many more professions but he always told me fighting wasn't one of them, so with all due respect to B, he could not fight. I however was only slightly better and he begged me to teach him.  
"God forbid someone tried to jump me. Then what"  
"Then you run"  
So if you've heard that's what he did when faced with a confrontation he knew he couldn't win. Or didn't plan on winning. Mentally or I should say personality wise, he wasn't the type. He wasn't very submissive, running red lights and raking up large tickets when I sent him out. "No one stops for me, why should I stop for them"  
That was the law of the world. It would stop turning for you so why should you stop for it. The law was a lie. This was B's flaw. He never realized what it so crudely known as Karma. The unwritten law of you must do to receive or some other way of saying it. But he never truly realized it. He just went on as my eyes, my hands, my shield. Our last case together before he left came in late 2001. In America, New York to be specific. It's quite obvious why we were there. My policy of there having to be more than 10 people and 1 million dollars at stake were both met literally more than 100 times over. I had wanted to see the extent of the damage first hand but both B and Watari told me to sit tight. B told me it was horrible. The news said it was horrible. The videos were unbelievable. But nothing really sat correctly with either of us. B and I. B said other terrorists had bombs previously in the planes and building, that's why they collapsed so neatly. I disagreed saying it had nothing to do with terrorists, that it was the United States government themselves responsible for the detonation of the building. We argued over the phone, on the computer and eventually B dropped the case altogether without my permission. I hated his arrogance. Thinking he could win by upsetting me, frustrating me. I was too calm to care about his childish mind games. I told him he would never drop a case under my name again or he would leave.  
"I hate you"  
He slammed the door ripping it of its hinges. The next day he was gone. His room empty, his things gone with where ever he went. I wanted to be like him. Able to express hate for one of my first acquaintances. He wasn't a friend. No one in Wammys House was a friend of mine. All heirs, challengers, successors, actors, or just what they were, orphans. I hadn't considered friendship a possibility in my life. Many others resented me like B did, detectives, cops, government officials, calling me the Hermit detective or other things when they thought no L was present to hear or know of it. I never cared nor do I presently. Jealousy is a shallow persons protection from reality. That they're just too fatheaded to admit when they're beaten. B was just as bad. Though according to him I was the fathead. He promised I'd see how much better he was than me. Than the three "Brats" I choose to replace the loss of my greatest heir. I truly felt that though they each held a spectacular trait distinct of B they could never truly replace him. Or me. Near had B's intelligence and sadly his sadistic dark side. Mello had his ambition to win but also his temper and avarice. Matt came closest in personality being cool minded and full of life as quiet as he was but there were the things the two never said that worried me. B walked away from his problems and started new ones. Awful I had to be the one to deal the ironic blow to him. I doubt he realizes how right he was. I wouldn▓t have found out. For a short time though. I would have realized. B was smart but blind. Even with his special eyes he was blind. He never could have won.

B told me he still loves me. He hates my guts and he wants me to die. But he loves L with all his heart and soul. I told him I didn't. I told him I hated L with all my heart and soul. That L was a heartless bastard of a man hiding from the worlds problems to solve them. He said he still loved L and I'd have to get over it.  
"It's better to hide from your problems than to run from them, Law"  
I hated it when he called me Law. It made me think of B. And then I realized why.  
"I hate you." He looked up peering through the steel bars innocently. "I hate you, Beyond Birthday. I hate everything about you. You are a cold, sick man and you deserve to die"  
The statement shocked him. His pale jaw dropped behind the mouth piece that kept him from biting his therapists.  
"I do." I looked into his dark eyes, my own eyes. "But I love B. That boy who ran to me when the news was on, who'd practice his laugh for me. The one who helped me on my cases. My eyes. My hands. My shield. I loved B. But I hate Beyond Birthday for killing him. And for that I'll never forgive you"  
I turned to leave a lump in my chest sliding into my throat. B stopped me.  
"Who said I killed him, Law"  
I peeked over my shoulder. A part of me thought the day I left him to wallow in that jail, the doctors and shrinks that couldn't get him to talk after seeing me, after all that, I thought I left B behind in there. I was careful not to repeat myself. To treat each of the new heirs with a certain love and respect, a certain care that they needed. I don't think I made any other killers.

-  
L Lawliet 8/31/04 12:45:16 


End file.
